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The Jewish State, Theodor Herzl (1897) the Origins of the Zionist

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The Jewish State, Theodor Herzl (1897) the Origins of the Zionist “The Jewish Question,” The Jewish State, Theodor Herzl (1897) Herzl, Theodor. "The Jewish Question." The Jewish State. Trans. Sylvie D'Avigdor. 1896. N.p.: American Zionist Emergency Council, 1946. N. pag. Print. The origins of the Zionist movement are often considered synonymous with the life and times of Theodor Herzl (1860-1904). Though Herzl died at a relatively young age, his ideas persevered; the Zionist movement did not collapse because its central figure died only seven years after the first Zionist Congress met. The dream to recreate a Jewish presence in the Holy land, Eretz Yisrael or Palestine, had extraordinary depth and variety. Two decades before Herzl died, Jews were immigrating in small numbers to Palestine, building settlements and a new life, distant from the vicious anti-Semitic outbursts that drove many to leave Eastern and Western Europe. Herzl was a catalyst for reconnecting Jews to their ancient homeland, forging a cohesive organization from the teeming debates amongst many European Jews about the desirability of a Jewish territory to provide for Jewish security. Born in 1860 in Hungary and schooled in Vienna, Herzl had neither a remarkably profound nor distant relationship to Judaism. In Figure 1 Theodore Herzl (Public Domain) his youth, he read a great deal, enjoyed secular literature, wrote short stories, poetry, fables, comedy, and was completely absorbed in German literary culture. He earned his law degree and was admitted to the bar in Vienna in 1884. For the next decade he wrote articles, plays, novels, traveled major cities of Europe, and in October 1891, became the Paris correspondent of the Viennese newspaper Neue Freie Presse, which was considered the most distinguished newspaper in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Herzl’s appointment reflected his competence as a writer and journalist. In Herzl’s early life, he did not encounter much anti-Semitism, but by 1892, his paper carried an increasing number of articles about Jews, the Jewish question, and anti-Semitism. These included articles about the persecution of Jews in Russia, the status of Jewish colonies evolving in Argentina with the support of the Jewish philanthropist Baron de Hirsch, and debates on the Jewish right to civic equality that were taking place in Berlin and Vienna. In August 1892, he wrote a long article on anti-Semitism, but offered no particular political solution. According to the 1906 edition of the Jewish Encyclopedia, he was “least aware” of his Zionist intellectual forerunners Moses Hess, Leon Pinsker, Reuven Alkalai, and Nahum Syrkin; hence he was ‘wired’ to emerge as a prominent Zionist leader, let alone become the “father of modern Zionism.” Herzl covered the Dreyfus trial as a correspondent for his paper. Alfred Dreyfus, an assimilating French Jewish military captain, was arrested in October 1894. By the end of that year, he was tried, convicted, court-martialed, and incarcerated for allegedly passing information about French artillery capabilities to a German military attaché in Paris. Based on fragmentary evidence and an absence of due process, his case was reopened in 1899. Despite these legal points, Dreyfus was reconvicted and sentenced to another ten years. Finally, in 1906, he was exonerated and released from prison. There is little doubt that the trial gave anti- Semitism stunning notice in what was believed to be an emancipating Europe; “in France it took on the dimensions of a civil war and rent European opinion asunder.”1 Zionist historiography and popular Zionist history gives overwhelming weight to the catalytic role that the Dreyfus trail had in motivating Herzl to write his treatise, “The Jewish State.” Alex Bein, in his classic biography of Herzl, claimed that Herzl possessed not the slightest evidence on which to base Dreyfus’ innocence. Herzl wrote, “A Jew who, as an officer on the [French] general staff, has before him an honorable career, cannot commit such a crime…the Jews, who have so long been condemned to a state of civic dishonor, have as a result, developed an almost pathological hunger for honor….” Bein concluded that Figure 1 Moshe Hess, one of Herzl's ideological Herzl found it “a psychological impossibility” for forerunners, and author of "Rome and Jerusalem: Dreyfus to have committed such a crime. That was The Last National Question" (1862). (CZA Photos) 1894; five years later, Herzl wrote at the time of the case’s reopening that it “embodies more than a judicial error; it embodies the desire of the vast majority of the French to condemn a Jew, and to condemn all Jews in this one Jew.” 2 In “The Jewish State”, Herzl called for Jews to organize themselves so that they could gain a territory of their own, to create institutions and forums, to oversee Jewish immigration and settlement and eventually create a state. Under his short watch, as precedent, he established the World Zionist Organization, conducted regular meetings of Zionist Congresses, and helped found the Jewish National Fund and Jewish Colonial Trust. The first Zionist Congress of some 200 delegates from all over Europe met in Basel, Switzerland in August 1897. Among the most salient entries in his diary are the passages from September 1897; “Were I to sum up the Basel Congress in one word--which I shall guard against pronouncing publicly--it would be this: at Basel I have founded the Jewish state. The foundation of a state lies in the will of the people for a state. Territory is only the material basis: the state, even when it possesses territory, is always something abstract. At Basel, then, I created this abstraction which, as such, is invisible to the vast majority of people--and with minimal means. I gradually worked the people into the mood for a state and made them feel that they were its National Assembly.” 3 1 Anna and Max Nordau, Max Nordau A Biography, New York, 1943, p. 118. 2 Alex Bein, Theodore Herzl, Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1940, pp. 114-116. 3 Shlomo Avineri, “Theodore Herzl’s Diaries as Bildungsroman,” Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 5, No.3 (1999), pp. 1-46. After the publication of “The Jewish State” and the conduct of the First Congress, Herzl became the maestro for political Zionism, its cheerleader, organizational guru, and diplomatic envoy to capitals and leaders of Europe and the Ottoman Empire. He crystallized existing feelings from individuals who wanted to see the establishment of a Jewish state and bestowed upon Zionism working structural frameworks. Herzl drove the movement by gaining notice amongst Jews and non-Jews alike of the Jewish desire for a state. He gave Zionism an address and imbued it with charismatic if not authoritarian leadership. Herzl succeeded because there were hundreds, even thousands of Jews enamored with the notion of Jewish self-determination. He showed that international diplomacy mattered even if securing support initially was rejected or not enthusiastically provided. In the two years before his death, Herzl met and introduced the idea of a Jewish home to numerous British officials (Arthur James Balfour, Lord Milner, Sir Edward Grey, and Lloyd George), all of whom would be instrumental in supporting the 1917 Balfour Declaration’s call for British support in Palestine of “a national home for the Jewish people.” Herzl did not leave the Zionist movement either uniform or homogenous in definition or outlook. In his short lifetime, he did not tackle with any candor the issue of a Jew’s loyalty to the state in which they lived as compared to support of Zionism; Herzl said very little about Arabs living in Palestine as an issue or problem that Zionists might confront in the future. And Herzl and his colleagues split on how best to achieve their objective: some thought it more advisable to seek Figure 3 Sultan Abdulhamid II—to whom Herzl appealed for a sanction permission from a great power to support a Jewish homeland, of support for Zionism. (Library of while others thought it best to first undertake practical work of Congress, Prints and Photographs physically returning to Palestine. Herzl sought but failed to Division, no known restrictions) obtain a ‘charter,’ or sanction, from Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II to support Zionism. Meanwhile, Jews emigrated from Eastern Europe in droves, running from the anti-Semitic outbursts in Russia, particularly the pogroms in the early 1900s. Most of the Jews who emigrated from European areas moved to the west, primarily to the United States, South America, and South Africa. At the turn of the century, only a handful of Jews immigrated to Palestine, some settling permanently, others testing the settings only to realize the move there was to too harsh and thus, for many, their stay was short-lived. Meanwhile, Russian pogroms against Jewish life and property reignited in places like Kishinev, Gomel, Bialystok, and other places, numbering 660 small and large attacks between November 1 and November 7. Herzl renewed a Zionist drive to land permission from Russia or England to sanction a place for a Jewish homeland, but failed. Prior to Herzl’s sudden death at 43 in July 1904, disparate Zionist leaders eventually crystallized a view that both practical (settlement) and political (seeking a charter or permission) should move in parallel, one reinforcing the other. A young Zionist leader who would emerge as an important cog in Jewish nation building over the next forty years, Menachem Ussishkin said that the movement had to attain the charter (permission from a great power or number of powers to build a national home from the top down, and simultaneously through practical work from the bottom up in Eretz Yisrael. As it evolved as a movement, a variety of thinkers stamped their preferences on Zionist development.
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